Once
to every man and nation,
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side;....

[
Text: James R. Lowell, in the Boston Courier, December 11,
1845. Lowell wrote these words as a poem protesting America’s
war with Mexico. Music: Welsh Hymn Tune]

William
Sloane Coffin, Jr. was born on June 1, 1924, in New York City to William
Sloane Coffin, Sr. and Catherine Butterfield Coffin. After the death
of Coffin's father in 1933, the family moved to Carmel, California,
where William attended public school until the ninth grade, when he
attended Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts. He spent the
following year in Paris with his family, studying to be a concert pianist
with Nadia Boulanger. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the
Coffins returned to the United States, and Coffin completed his high
school education at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, graduating
in 1942.

Coffin
attended Yale University School of Music for one year before enlisting
in the United States Army. Coffin served in the army until 1947, rising
to the rank of captain while working as a liaison with the French and
Soviet armies. He returned to the university upon his discharge and
received his B.A. in 1949. Coffin spent the next year studying at Union
Theological Seminary, then joined the Central Intelligence Agency for
a three year period. Coffin returned to Yale once again in 1953, this
time attending the divinity school, from which he received a B.D. in
1956. That same year he was ordained as Presbyterian minister. Coffin
then served as chaplain of Phillips Andover Academy and Williams College
in successive one year periods, before returning to Yale in 1958 to
succeed Sidney Lovett as university chaplain, a position he held until
1975.

While
chaplain at Yale, Coffin emerged as a public figure involved in numerous
prominent events, activities, and organizations. He became involved
in international relief work, beginning with Operation Crossroads Africa.
On behalf of that group, he led a group of students to Guinea in the
summer of 1960. The following year, Coffin was appointed to the President's
Advisory Committee on the Peace Corps and established its training program.
He trained the first group of Peace Corps volunteers in Puerto Rico
during the summer of 1961.

Coffin
also became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement in the early
1960s. He was one of the “Freedom Riders,” a group of black
and white activists who rode interstate buses in the South to challenge
segregation laws. Following one of these rides in May of 1961, he was
arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, along with six other demonstrators,
and charged with disturbing the peace. He was also arrested on several
other occasions for direct actions against segregation laws. In addition
to his direct participation in civil rights protests in the South, Coffin
recruited and coordinated the work of many northern activists, particularly
white students, and he was also a member of the Connecticut Advisory
Board of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

With
the escalation of military actions in Vietnam, Coffin became heavily
involved in the protests against the war. His activism began in 1965
with the formation of Americans For Re-appraisal of Far Eastern Policy,
a group founded by Coffin and Allard Lowenstein that pushed for United
States recognition of the People's Republic of China, the admission
of China into the United Nations, and a cease-fire in Vietnam. Later
that year, Coffin joined with a group of religious leaders, including
John Bennett, Abraham Heschel, and Daniel Berrigan, to form the National
Emergency Committee of Clergy Concerned About Vietnam. Coffin was named
executive secretary of the organization. Initially, the group adopted
a relatively moderate stance, recommending traditional political action
and persuasion to affect change in U.S. policy toward Vietnam.

As
the war in Vietnam escalated and lay people became interested in the
work of the group, it changed its name to Clergy and Laity Concerned
About Vietnam (CALCAV). CALCAV organized mobilizations, supported conscientious
objectors and acts of civil disobedience, and urged members to offer
draft resisters sanctuary in churches and synagogues. During this time,
Coffin became a frequent speaker at anti-war rallies and a highly public
figure. At an October 1967 protest in Boston, over 1000 draft resisters
turned in their draft cards at a church service led by Coffin. Later
that month, he and a number of other activists who had collected cards
throughout the country, presented them to officials at the Department
of Justice in Washington. As a result of these actions, Coffin was indicted
along with Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, and Michael
Ferber on charges of conspiracy to aid draft resisters. They were convicted
in 1968, but the charges were dropped in 1970 after the verdict was
overturned on appeal. Coffin continued to protest against the war, and
even traveled to North Vietnam in 1972 to accompany three released prisoners
on their trip back to the United States. In the war's final stages and
after its end, Coffin was an outspoken proponent of the granting of
amnesty for draft resisters.

Throughout
his tenure at Yale, Coffin's actions met with mixed reviews among Yale
students, administrators, and alumni. Many older alumni and other conservative
Yale factions called for his resignation or removal. While Kingman Brewster,
Yale's president, disagreed with Coffin's methods of protest, particularly
his stand on and involvement in civil disobedience, he stood behind
Coffin's rights to free speech and held that Coffin's influence on Yale
was generally positive. Coffin left Yale in December 1975, citing the
need to remove himself from the academy in order to work on a global
level for social justice, disarmament, and an end to hunger.

After
leaving Yale, Coffin published his memoirs, Once
to Every Man: A Memoir, and in November 1977, he became
senior minister of Riverside Church in New York City. While at Riverside,
Coffin dedicated himself to a variety of human rights causes, including
world hunger, disarmament, homelessness, and poverty, among others.
In 1979 he made headlines again by traveling to Iran to hold Christmas
services for hostages being held in the American Embassy. In 1987, he
left Riverside to become president of SANE/FREEZE, which was renamed
Peace Action in 1993.

Coffin
married Eva Rubinstein, a ballet dancer and the daughter of Arthur Rubinstein,
in 1956 and they had three children: Amy, Alexander, and David. They
were divorced in 1968. Coffin re-married in 1969, to Harriet Gibney;
they divorced shortly after he left Yale.Coffin's third wife is Virginia
Randolph Witson After becoming president emeritus of SANE/FREEZE in
the mid-1990s, Coffin moved to Vermont and continued to teach and lecture.